Would They Die for a Lie?

[Drich]

[Bucky Ball]

WTF are you even talking about ? 

I don't know what you mean by 26 dead.. or why a mass murder of christians is funny to you.

Do try to follow along, Drippy. No one said it was funny. 
YOU said "show me an active one that isn't. show me one where the believer doesn't get anything for service and worship"
You see dear, they were at worship. And what they got was being murdered, and your fool deity did nothing to help them. THAT's what they got for their worship. 
Even someone as stupid as you should be able to get that. 

as far as your little link to anti christian propaganda. it's been brought up several times now and shot down with quotations from 1 century eye witness accounts from letters from the Emperor of Rome to a regional governor with orders to execute all known/verified christians to roman historians recording the burning of rome and emperor nero blaming the christians and the horrible ways they were killed. Again all first and second century source material from secular historians or first person accounts trumps any bull shite commentary people with an obvious bias and fake history have to say.

Too bad for you, your links have been proven to be bogus. Dr. Candida Moss IS A CHRiTSIAN scholar of the NT. When YOU get a position at Notre Dame teaching, as she had, you can let us know ... meanwhile you are dismissed for the angry theist asshole you are. 

As we saw with the 9/11 bombers ... yes, religious nuts die for a lie, and have for a millennia. 

[Fake Messiah]

Proof that Jesus on the cross is fabricated story and not from eyewitness memory, even indirectly, is that it is simply a tacit rewrite of Psalm 22.

Jesus is attached to the cross, presumably with nails, based on Ps. 22:16, "They have pierced my hands and feet." The soldiers divide his garments (Mark 15:24), a detail derived directly from Ps. 22:18, "They divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots." The gloating mockers "wag their heads," an odd phrase, and one derived from Ps. 22:7: "All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads." The very taunts of the priests ("Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross, that we may see and believe!" Mark 15:32) echo those that stung the Psalmist: "`He committed his cause to Yahve; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"' (Ps. 22:8).

There is Jesus' cry of dereliction, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" which is of course the opening line of Psalm 22, only Mark does not say so.

Indeed most if not all of Jesus life and sayings is simply plagiarized from characters of the OT, especially Moses. I mean hello slaughter of innocents children same as when Moses was born.

[Bucky Ball]

There are all kinds of other things that don't add up.

1. In the Pax Romana trouble-makers were just summarily executed by standing order. (He caused a ruckus in the temple - the temple was the economic life-blood of Jerusalem). The entire economy of the city was built on festival/tourism-temple sacrifice-priest fees and temple fees, and procuring the vast numbers of animals for the ritual sacrifices.
2. The standing order for execution did not involve a trial ... they were just executed.
3. Galilean peasants were never brought into the presence of Roman aristocrats ... they would never bother with the "low-life".
4. The Sanhedrin was never once in all of history called into session on Passover weekend ... it's like the temple curtain being torn ... if it had happened, the Jews who kept records of everything, far more mundae, would have written about it.
5. The gospels are contradictory on the day and time of the death.
6. In one gospel it says he was silent and said nothing at the trial. In another he gives a long speech.
7. IF the authorities had gone to all the trouble to try and execute him for the vast threat he (supposedly) was, and a couple days later there were reports of him (and 500 others) rising from the dead, they would have mounted a search to try to find him again ... in fact in Acts, Peter has to actually go through the "story" and tell the Jews what they (supposedly) did .

[Jehanne]

[The Grand Nudger]

The Wemstroms: How words turn from innocent to negative

There are mounds and mounds of the faithful who take comfort in the idea that there is some critical mass of historical information regarding their faith..but, if they knew the contents of that mass, they'd be utterly disappointed.

I half agree with this. A lot of Christians know little about things like redaction criticism or who didn't write the pseudepigrapha etc. But go below the problems with the NT as a collection of sources, and apply historical methods, and I honestly do believe it strengthens the case for Xianity immeasurably.

This is what writers like N.T. Wright and J.P. Meier are doing- proper historical process applied to NT history. When you do this, you see things in a totally different light; you understand why it makes sense to believe.

And as I said, following proper historical method, with all the different sources and types of reference in the NT, tells us that those disciples paid a heavy price for their beliefs. Whatever else might have been the case, the reality is that those disciples believed in Jesus strongly enough to pay whatever price it took.

And other thoughts of that ilk.

Have a good Xmas, everybody!

No amount of a historical jesus would provide sense to believe in a mythical christ, Vicki. No one paid a heavy price for their beliefs, in early turn rome. They paid a heavy price for sedition and stupidity. Burn some incense to a fake god..and you live. Refuse, you die. The christians went the same route for centuries.

The historical truth of roman persecution of christians..is that it didnt begin in earnest until christians were in control of the levers of persecution. They were driving out competitor christianities. Pagan rome didn't give a fuck about a bunch of heathens superstitions. Their entire world was full of them. If you want an accurate picture of how a legit roman saw christianity, try Julian. It was his successors political need to end that dynasty and separate himself from the julio claudian culture and apparatus that created modern christer belief.